Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

It took me a couple of hours—and a fair bit more blood than I'd planned to donate—but eventually, the last of the "Threat Signatures" dropped.

Let's be clear: I wasn't exactly being the model of tactical brilliance out here. After all, I'm supposed to be the one attracting attention while the actual damage dealers do something violent behind me. I don't really have the tools to be soloing in the mud like it's some masochistic open-world challenge run. However, we play with the toys we have, so it's been just me, a half-broken branch and a persistent refusal to die on anyone else's schedule.

The three Shadows clustered in the northwest quadrant—[Skulkborn], according to the prompt that flashed when I got close—turned out to be nesting. They were curled around a hollow slick with Veil residue, like dogs that had learned to sleep in nightmares. Once I got close, the first came at me low, jaws snapping, but it didn't expect the thrown rock. That got me just enough time to close the gap and bury my makeshift cudgel in the side of its head. The other two took more convincing. One bled out slowly after trying to climb a tree and discovering gravity still worked. The other decided to try its luck up close. That one got the full benefit of my freshly levelled Closed Circle and ended up folded over itself like a broken lawn chair.

The two faint contacts in the southern treeline—[Screecher-Wisps], apparently—weren't scouts. They were scavengers. Lanky, twitchy things that moved like they were stuck half a second behind reality, all lag and nerves. I didn't fight them so much as out-patient them—picked off one when it got caught in a root snare and flailed itself into exhaustion. The other tried to leap me and missed by an impressive margin, smacking into a tree like a drunken parkour fail. One swift crack from my branch and it evaporated into a hiss of corrupted air. Score one for panicked reflexes and sturdy local timber.

And finally, this left the Dormant Signature at the Ruined Cairn which was… odd. There was no movement from it at all as I approached. Just a curl of static on the minimap that refused to resolve into anything solid. I approached with all the stealth I could muster – which when you have an aura that triggers wrath when you come close, wasn't much - expecting an ambush to trigger or some horrid shadow-mimic crouched behind the stones to suddenly arise.

However, it was just… there. A husk. A [Veil-Walker Remnant], half-buried in the cairn rubble, blackened like old resin. It twitched as Aggro Magnetism fell upon it, rather like a corpse remembering the idea of movement, and then crumbled into ash when I nudged it with the toe of my boot. If I had to guess, I assumed this thing had tried to breach the Veil during our fight with the Alchemist and burned out in the attempt.

As it collapsed down, my minimap dimmed slightly. All the red motes had blinked out now, and a moment later, the System pinged.

> [System Notification: Threshold Alert – Priority Downgrade Applied]

> Local Veil Stability: ↑ 62% (Improving)

> Residual Shadow Presence: Suppressed

> Warden Protocol: Verified (Field Conditions Satisfied)

> Environmental Hostility: Reduced

> Building Penalties: Lifted

> [Settlement Menu Updated: New Structures Available]

Village Hall – Available

Signal Cairn – Available

Storage Shed – Available

Hunter's Lodge – Available

> [Integration Progress: Partial Sync Achieved]

Threshold Anchor: [Well of Ascension]

↳ Status: Stabilising

↳ Link: Halfway Hold – Stable

That was much more like it.

My whole body ached. My stick was officially done and what was left of my trousers were torn in ways that suggested a tailor might have a small heart attack just looking at them. But I was alive. The area around us was clear. And most importantly—my village was no longer choking on its own construction penalties.

And I had a nice bunch of level-up notifications to work through.

Firstly, Aggro Magnetism had moved up to level 3 during the tussle with the Screecher-Wisps.

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Aggro Magnetism – Lvl 3 (Active Aura)

You are the centre of the storm. Enemies will notice you.

- Effect Radius: +7 metres (base range)

- Duration: +3 seconds (base duration)

- Activation Cooldown: 30 seconds

- Rage Debuff (Lvl 2)

-20% Dodge

-20% Endurance

+10% Stamina drain per action

25% chance to misapply Abilities

Cannot voluntarily disengage from target during effect duration

- Synergy Detected: Lineholder's Instinct

Enemies under Rage Debuff suffer -5% Attack Speed

Initial pull effect applies mild stagger to nearby targets (1 sec recovery)

Which was all pretty nice. I'd already seen how useful that Rage Debuff could be—especially against anything faster, slipperier, or meaner than I was. The hit to Dodge and Endurance didn't just wear them down—it dragged them into the fight I wanted to have. One where I could land hits and where their footwork didn't save them. Getting a creature to commit to a frontal assault instead of dancing around my reach was the kind of shift you felt in your bones. And, let's be honest, blood.

And that wasn't all. Both Closed Circle and Improvised Javelin had bumped up to Level 2, and the difference on both accounts was pretty nice. Closed Circle had started to feel like it actually belonged to me—no longer just a fancy name for what I did in a bind, but something that shaped the fight. I now got a flat +10% bonus to any kind of up-close brutality: fists, elbows, knees, whatever I could swing in a tight corridor or tree-choked glade. Everything I'd learned from Griff about stairwell fights and bus-stop brawls was suddenly official System doctrine.

And that [Off-Balance] status it now applied during a grapple? That was going to be really helpful power as would let me control the tempo, break their footing, and stack the odds. Up close, that was going to be everything. Tempo was half the fight. Hell, sometimes it was the fight.

And Improvised Javelin had moved up from stopping feeling like hopeful lobbing and started behaving like an actual combat technique. At Level 2, the crit rate spike when targeting anything distracted or staggered gave me a reason to be clever with positioning again. The System now even rewarded a bit of flair—+10% impact force when inside fifteen metres. Turns out all those hours throwing pens into corkboards hadn't been a complete waste of time after all.

And yet…

I was still stuck at Level 3.

Seven Shadows down including one close-range kill that had nearly taken my arm off. If that wasn't enough to push me to Level 4, then the XP curve was clearly getting steeper. I guess the climb was on. The System wasn't about to hand out trophies just for staying alive. If I wanted to keep pace, I'd need to do more than survive. I'd need to anchor. Build. Guard the breach.

And maybe kill a few more things trying to crawl through it.

I flexed my hand, feeling the healing scabs across my knuckles tighten. The woods were quiet again. But Bayteran had made one thing very clear: quiet wasn't the same as safe. Which segued me nicely to the new Trait I'd picked up. Which, actually, wasn't nice at all.

Shadow Marked – Lvl 1 (Passive)

You didn't reject the venom. You absorbed it. The infection failed—but something else remained. A trace. A thread. A foothold. And now the Shadow knows your name.

> +20% Resistance to [Poison], [Corruption], and [Infection] effects

> First [Venom], [Toxin], or [Paralytic] effect per encounter is nullified automatically

> Shadow-aligned entities no longer register you as entirely "Other"

> Magical detection returns "Unstable" alignment

> Suppressed side effects: internal temperature variance, dream leakage, minor hallucinations

> Advisory: Repeated exposure to Shadow may accelerate alignment shift

> Current Drift: [Shadow Tolerance 3%] ← Monitored

System Warning:

Your body has adapted. Your soul has not.

Be mindful what thresholds you choose to cross.

Great. Nothing like a little bit of Congratulations, you survived a venomous death spasm by becoming mildly possessed.

I read through the Trait twice. Then a third time, slower and tried not to wince at the line about dream leakage. And tried even harder not to get stuck on the bit that said alignment shift.

I'd known murky allegiances before—safehouses where no one wore clean colours and the only loyalty that mattered was to keep breathing through the night. Griff used to say, "You don't have to be on the right side, Eli. Just know which side you're on, and why you're standing there." But this Trait didn't look like it was anything to do with choosing sides. This was being nudged across a line without my say-so. Like a coin slipping into the wrong pocket.

Shadow Tolerance: 3%

Yeah. I wasn't overly keen on that. Small enough to ignore—for now, I told myself. I'd survived the bite, after all. Burned the venom out before it could settle in. That should've been the end of it, shouldn't it? But then the Trait had appeared anyway . . .

I shut the menu with a flick of thought and filed the whole mess into the mental cupboard marked Things to Worry About Later, Maybe When Not Bleeding. Then I stood. Muscles stiff, shoulder throbbing and stick long since broken.

There were no more threat pings. No flickering red markers on the edge of my vision. Just wet undergrowth, twitching trees, and the promise of another cold walk back.

I rolled my neck once and started back through the woods. One foot in front of the other. Path or no path.

The shadows didn't follow.

But they hadn't gone far.

Probably.